The finally got around to making Escape from Outer Space, except that Kurt Russell is nowhere to be found and they decided to call it Lockout. Guy Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential) stars as the retro-styled wiseass action hero surnamed Snow, a tough guy with no easy respect for authority. It’s the future, and now Earth’s best maximum security prison is MS One, a high tech facility in orbit above the planet. The inmates are now loose and have taken the president’s daughter hostage. The government gives Snow an ultimatum: go up there and bring her back, or forfeit your freedom and your life. Of course, the tough guy takes the mission.
Lockout has every opportunity to be horrible, and it kind of is. Everything in the film is borrowed, from its absurd premise to its aggressively mundane cinematography (EVERYTHING is teal and orange). In spite of these drawbacks, however, it manages to be stupidly entertaining. The key is that none of the actors seem to know they’re in a bad movie. For a space prison rescue movie the performances are really strong and mostly believable. Pearce really seems to be enjoying himself in the lead, inflecting his voice with gravel and cracking wise, and Maggie Grace (the blonde from Lost’s early seasons) holds her own next to him.
The most surprising thing about this film is how it manages to capture, however imperfectly, the retro-action vibe it so clearly tries to borrow on. So many remakes and reboots and comebacks these days draw on their source material in name only, lacking whatever wit and verve energized the better action flicks of twenty years ago. I don’t want to overpraise Lockout, as though it’s a fantastic return to form that reinvigorates a tired genre, but it’s a lot better than anyone should expect it to be.
Lights in the Darkness 